10. Monitor the managerial and executive responses to organisational challenges and failures.
The way senior staff act in their roles shapes the way the rest of the company responds and behaves in similar situations. If senior staff within the organisation see all challenges as an opportunity to learn, grow, develop and improve on their work, it will foster a culture of learning and development.
11. Be conscious of the subtler attitudes to learning and development
The underlying attitude to training and development can be highly influenced by how resources are allocated to it in comparison to other activities and departments within the business. If management appears to have a negative attitude to learning and development, or places a low value upon it, so will the entire team.
12. Clearly define and communicate how are you track return on investment of training activities.
If people know that their training has a value, and that the value is being quantifiably measured by senior management, then a learning culture will continue to develop. Conversely if they don’t see this, then they start to get the impression that the company doesn’t care, and they in turn shouldn’t care about their own learning and development either.
13. Encourage internal coaching and mentoring.
Valuing the skills that already exist inside the team make people feel valued and encourages the sharing of knowledge.
14. Reward the whole company when KPIs are exceeded
Part of cultivating a positive learning culture is reducing the risk of employees competing with one another. If one person wins then somebody else have to have ‘lost’. To foster a team working culture set personal KPIs, and require each person to be effectively meeting the objectives of their job – the expected minimum requirement. Then, have company KPIs that if exceeded offer reward to everyone – recognising the collective contributions of skills and knowledge from everyone.
This will reduce the likelihood of competition – which causes employees to withhold and hide their knowledge from each other.
15. Encourage peer training sessions
Encourage internal buddy days where the team work with employees and colleagues from other departments and spend a few hours of the day conducting a completely different job within the organisation. This increases cross departmental sharing of best practice and cultivates improvements made by gaining outside perspective. It also generates wider learning and collaboration within the organisation.
16. Reward behaviors attitudes and outcomes that are most in line with the desired culture of the organisation.
Too often it is bad behavior that is rewarded with attention and resources, leaving those who work hard and consistently meet their KPIs feeling unnoticed and undervalued. Ensure that positive behavior is noticed and given managerial attention far more than negative actions and situations.
17. The way that you recruit will impact organisational learning culture.
Hire internally before you advertise externally. Provide numerous opportunities of promotion from within. If employees can see that their development is rewarded by progress in their career, they will be far more likely to engage in developmental activities as they will be confident that their efforts can bring the reward of climbing higher up the career ladder.
Last Thoughts:
Clearly communicate the organisational values and explicitly describe the behaviors and attributes of culture that you desire. If people don’t know exactly what the desired learning culture looks like and how it is measured, they simply cannot model it.
How do you cultivate effective learning cultures in your organisation?
